The Aviary

The Aviary by Kathleen O'Dell

The Aviary is many things and many genres rolled up into one delightful book that I would recommend to girls from 5^th to 8^th grade. I am certain that many women will enjoy it as well. It feels nostalgic. It very much reminds me of the way books used to be written. It has charm and eloquence. These days a book might be marketed as fantasy or as a ghost story. A book might be described as historic fiction or a mystery. This novel happens to be all of these things without broadcasting it to world with fanfare.

There is a decrepit old mansion sitting in the nineteenth century among its well-kept neighbors. While its neighbors have manicured lawns and flowering gardens maintained by hired help, the old mansion’s only outside decoration is an outdoor aviary filled with various birds that withstand the heat and cold, wind, rain and sun, day after day, year after year, long after their lives should have ended.

Whereas the other estates boast a huge workforce to support their families’ bustling social life, the broken-down mansion’s only owner is an elderly invalid who is waited upon by a housekeeper and a cook. The housekeeper has an eleven-year-old daughter whose whole world resides within the walls of this mansion. Her name is Clara and she does not see the mansion as it is, but as it once was. Clara has a weak heart and her mother, Harriet, protects her from the elements as well as the exertions of life outside the mansion’s crumbling walls.

Clara’s best friend and only companion is the elderly Cenelia Glendoveer who educates Clara from the confines of her bed. Mrs. Glendoveer is the widow of the late, great George Glendoveer, magician and illusionist extraordinaire! Mr. Glendoveer had amassed great wealth at one time before a certain great tragedy and now that wealth has run out. Clara’s mother has been selling off valuables to continue to support their mistress.

The birds in the aviary are Mrs. Glendoveer’s prized possessions. Clara does not understand why. She finds them to be horrible, nearly insane, birds. Whenever she attempts to approach them, they create such as huge ruckus of screeching and squawking. Clara is scared of them. And then one day, the mynah with the blood-red eyes squawks the name Elliot at her. Clara is surprised for the birds have never talked before.

Clara reports the incident to Mrs. Glendoveer who then decides to share a piece of her past with Clara. She had a baby boy named Elliot who was lost. Mrs. Glendoveer does not elaborate, but requests that Clara report back on anything else the birds might say. In fact, Mrs. Glendoveer suspects that they might talk more if Clara were to engage them more herself.

Poor Mrs. Glendoveer does not last long after she entices Clara with her vague story of sorrow. And Clara is soon courted by a girl her own age who lives two doors over and is interested in the ghost of the girl that hides in the mansion shrouded in mystery and surrounded by stories of murder and mayhem. With a new friend to support and encourage her, Clara begins to trust the strength of her own heart and starts to dig up the answers to the questions posed by the five birds in the aviary. But Clara is running out of time. Her mother intends to sell the mansion to the highest bidder. Clara must work behind her mother’s back and against her mother’s wishes to satisfy the dying desire of an old woman:

Together always to the last,
Our love shall hold each other fast.
Delivered from the frost and foam,
None shall fly ‘til all come home.